Sophisticated / covert
Bad faith wearing the costume of good faith — the endless sincere question, the worried ally, the debate that resets every time you answer it. Hardest to name, because each individual message looks reasonable.
Responding at this level
Recognition matters more than response. The tell is the pattern across a conversation, never any single message, and the honest advice is to judge the exchange rather than the sentence.
- Keeping a record →
Writing down what happened, when it happened and who saw it — a practice borrowed from guidance about stalking and harassment, not tested for the ordinary tactics documented elsewhere on this site.
- Don't feed the trolls →
Declining to reply, so that provocation produces no reaction and no audience. The most repeated advice on the internet, and among the least examined.
13 tactics at this level
Sealioning
Relentless, superficially polite demands for evidence that exhaust the target while preserving the appearance of good faith.
Rhetorical
Just Asking Questions
Advancing a claim entirely through insinuating questions, so nothing is ever asserted and nothing can be rebutted.
Rhetorical
Concern trolling
Opposing something while posing as a worried supporter of it, so the objection arrives pre-shielded from challenge.
Rhetorical
Whataboutism
Deflecting a criticism by raising a different alleged wrong instead of answering the one raised.
Rhetorical
Gish gallop
Burying an opponent under more claims than can be answered in the time available, so unanswered reads as unanswerable.
Rhetorical
Moving the goalposts
Raising the standard of evidence each time it is met, so the demand can never be satisfied.
Rhetorical
Motte-and-bailey
Advancing a strong contentious claim, then retreating to a modest defensible one when challenged, then returning.
Rhetorical
Conversational gaslighting
Denying what was plainly said or done until the other person doubts their own recollection.
Rhetorical
DARVO
Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender — a documented response pattern that recasts the accused as the wronged party.
Rhetorical
Kafkatrapping
Framing a charge so that denial is treated as proof of it.
Rhetorical
Loaded questions
Questions whose presupposition is conceded by any direct answer.
Rhetorical
Quote mining
Excerpting accurately but selectively so the quoted person appears to say the opposite of what they said.
Rhetorical
Feigned ignorance
Performing not-understanding to make the other party keep re-explaining indefinitely.
Rhetorical